For Schendel, 1964 was a year of daring artistic experimentation. She oscillated between representation and abstraction and explored new materials, such as rice paper and the red earth of São Paulo, which she mixed with her oil paints. Here, Schendel strips painting of its canvas to expose its coarse wooden stretcher hammered with nails. Crude yet vulnerable, this grid presents itself not as an optical schema but rather as a constructed object with a tactile dimension. The artist noted, “I give the utmost importance to [art] being manual like this, that it be handmade, that it be experienced.”
Gallery label from Sur moderno: Journeys of Abstraction—The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift, October 21, 2019–March 14, 2020
